About the Museum

The Acadian Museum is located deep in the heart of Louisiana’s Cajun country, in Vermilion Parish, which has the highest concentration of French speakers of any parish in Louisiana. The term Cajun is the anglicized pronunciation of the French word ‘Cadien, which is what the Acadians called themselves when they arrived in Louisiana, as far back as 1764.

Our Acadian ancestors had first settled the lands around the Bay of Fundy (today’s Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) in 1604, 16 years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. The Pilgrims’ grandchildren had gradually encroached on their lands over the next century and, by 1755, British forces had arranged the imprisonment and deportation of over 10,000 men, women, and children, loading them onto ships and scattering families among each of the major British colonies to keep them from regrouping. Those exiled from Nova Scotia back then are the genetic and cultural ancestors of today’s South Louisiana French-Acadian (or “Cajun”) people. After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, boatloads of these exiled Acadians began a migration to Louisiana, which was then a Spanish colony. The Acadian Museum was founded in an effort to keep that history and memory alive.